restore PC

What brand/model PC.

Most PC ship with some form of recovery that you can use to restore the PC

back to factory settings.

This is a laptop, HP pavilion. It has no disk, I had to do this once before and at start up you have to press "F?" something and go to a menu and ?. I can't remember. What I do know is that the hard drive is split 2. Original set up and everything after, so there is a restore process to get back to original set up. I just can't remember.

What model pavilion?

You an usually access the Recovery Partition by pressing F11 at the HP logo.

With HP you have to make your own recover disks. I've always been given the option when I first started the computer new. Not sure where to go to make one when you get it going again.

As mcorton pointed out, you used to get prompted, nay, darn near nagged to make the recovery disks. On the last three new HPs I've setup, you have to actually go launch the utility yourself. Bottom line is, without the typical dire warning, most users aren't going to know they should make those discs, or even that they CAN make those discs. One more wonderful idea from PC makers....